Le Miracle de la manne

In 1577 Tintoretto was covering the ceiling of the upper hall of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, a lay charitable brotherhood in Venice. He had won the commission with an audacious offer: to paint the whole cycle for the cost of materials alone, which effectively shut out his rivals. This canvas shows the Israelites gathering manna in the desert of Exodus, and it is among the earliest versions to follow the text closely, letting the food fall at night rather than by day. The brotherhood was devoted to Saint Roch, protector against plague, and these were plague years in Venice, the outbreak that killed Titian in 1576 still fresh in memory. Tintoretto worked in this building, on and off, for more than two decades.